Holiday lights mystery may be reopened

By MONSY ALVARADO  STAFF WRITER  (NorthJersey.com)

DEMAREST – They have been missing for more than two years. And even though the holiday lights that decorated the borough’s large pine tree in the center of town have long since been replaced, the mystery of what happened to them has lingered.

Now, at the urging of one resident, the case of the missing lights may be reopened.

Demarest Police Chief James Brower would not comment on an “ongoing investigation.” Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said because of a recent complaint letter to his office, the Demarest Police Department sent documents of the case to the county’s confidential investigations unit, which in turn forwarded it to the state Attorney General’s Office.

Molinelli said the state office had investigated the case as a bias crime in the past and found nothing.

“We sent it to the Attorney General’s Office because they had done the original investigation,” Molinelli said.

Resident Michael Cino, who has pushed for the probe, said the case has not been investigated correctly.

“We called for an investigation … which would produce witness statements that would be evidence if a crime had taken place,” he said, refusing to say who is joining him in the call for an investigation.

Democratic Mayor Jim Carroll said he has given statements to police.

“This has been investigated, and no wrongdoing was found,” Carroll said. “If there was anything to this, actions would have been taken by now.”

The lights were found to be missing in 2001, several months after the Borough Council agreed to hire a contractor to prune the 70-foot tree near the railroad station. Councilman Brian Bernstein, a Democrat, said the lights were removed during the pruning and were never put back. He said he notified the council in November that the lights were missing.

“No one knew what happened to them,” he said.

In a November 2001 meeting, Democratic Councilman Tom Connolly said that once he was told that the lights were missing, he contacted the contractor, who said the lights had been placed in two barrels at the base of the tree. Bernstein said he thinks the lights were mistaken for trash.

“My personal feeling is that they ended up in the back of the garbage truck,” he said.

But Cino questions why the council never filed a police report on the lights, which cost more than $2,000 to replace. He suspects they may have been taken intentionally. He said at the time there was a group in Demarest that was pushing to permanently “turn off the big Christmas tree.”

He said he attended a Democratic Club meeting in June 2001 at the railroad station, where members, including Carroll, were pushing for a new holiday display with a smaller tree and other religious symbols.

Cino’s claims were backed by Republicans who were running for election in 2002. In a flier, the GOP accused the Democrats of trying to “do away with our traditional holiday tree.” The Republicans stated that the Democrats had bought a smaller tree without council approval.

“It became contentious because things were being purchased without permission,” said Republican Councilman Ray Cywinski, who ran for mayor in 2002.

Democrats say they never wanted to do away with the tree and its lights and called the investigation political.

“The holiday tree was always intended to be the center of our town as it’s always been and it would always be lit,” Bernstein said.